Grouping of various wireless communications devices, such as two-way radios and/or cellular mobile phones, onto a common channel, such as a special talk channel, can be useful in various situations including emergencies. For example emergency services personal such as police, fire fighters and ambulance crew may wish to communicate with each other over a common radio channel in order to coordinate activities. Typically the grouping of their wireless devices is based on proximity or location, so that for example a wounded police officer may request assistance and the nearest police officers to their wounded colleague may have their wireless communications devices switched to a common channel in order to talk with each other and the wounded officer in order to coordinate that assistance.
Examples of communications systems in which these special talk groups are used include Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) and Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) systems. TETRA handsets use professional mobile radio (PMR), direct-mode or walkie-talkie type two-way radio communications as well as cellular voice and data services, such as those provided by Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), code division multiple access (CDMA), and universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) networks. PMR is a trunked or cellular based network approach which provides call services such as one-to-many calls and which is more robust than typical commercial cellular systems such as GSM.
A problem with the above described approach, however, is that a network manager or console operator is required to manually perform the re-grouping function in order to switch all the relevant wireless devices to the common channel. This requires the operator to identify surrounding peers and to send a dynamic regrouping command to the wireless devices of those peers.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.